Frustrations, Fears, and Forging Ahead
by Alex Kade
Summary: Q calls in a favor from the opposite side of the pond, reminding him all over again why he and Riley made such a brilliant team, and stirring up emotions all over the place.


"What?" Riley answered the phone, his voice slow and thick and somewhat muffled.

Q blinked momentarily at the sound of it. Not that Riley had sounded angry in what was apparently his version of a proper phone greeting, just...aloof and perhaps a little confused. It wasn't what the Quartermaster had been expecting, not even remotely.

"Were you sleeping?" he asked, knowing it was a silly question even as it was coming out of his mouth.

There was a long pause on the other end, long enough that Q was afraid his friend had fallen back to sleep with him still on the line. He debated on simply hanging up and trying again (this was a matter of urgency, after all), when a low groan poured into his ear, bringing a half smile to his lips. It was the type of whiney sound a stubborn child often made when being woken up for school. Q found it endearing.

"Come, now, Riley," he encouraged with an appropriate school master tone, "we've work to do and I need you alert."

Another pause, a much shorter one, followed by another moan. "But it's one in the morning. Respect the time zone, Q."

The Quartermaster huffed out a laugh. "I monitor agents all over the world, Mr. Poole. Of course I know what time it is. Given our work patterns while you were under my supervision, I assumed you would still be awake. Apologies for the misunderstanding, but I really must insist that you get online as soon as possible. I have an agent on your side who's in a bit of a jam, and your familiarity with the area will prove most beneficial in getting her out of it; so please, if you could, I am asking for your assistance."

There was a shuffling sound as Riley sighed out, "Yeah, yeah, give me a second," alerting Q to the fact that Riley had to physically get up to retrieve his laptop. He'd been wrong on two counts, then - Riley not only did not stay up at all hours on his computer like Q had been led to believe, but he didn't even sleep with it in his vicinity. So strange for a tech genius of his caliber. Normally people like him, people like Q, were practically glued to their computers. Then again, Riley had constantly been surprising him the entire time he'd been in London. Why should it be any different now that he had returned home?

"Okay, logging on now," the hacker muttered, sounding only slightly more awake that he had been a minute ago. There was an abrupt silence in Q's ear followed a second later by a ping on his computer, alerting him to the fact that he was receiving a video call, to which Q found himself grinning shamelessly. While his...whatever-it-was he'd had with Riley had been nice, they'd both agreed that things would go back to being respectfully professional (on a friendly level) following Riley's departure. They couldn't very well maintain an actual relationship across an entire ocean, after all, particularly when Q had a tendency to suffer panic attacks whenever he boarded a plane. Since then, they'd hardly even spoken on the phone, both of them too preoccupied with their jobs to do so, and perhaps just to make the split a little easier on them both. There was no denying that what they'd had was definitely more than just a casual fling, as was proven by Q's violent need to avenge his partner's kidnapping and subsequent torture, and thus despite their agreement the separation over the past month or so had been a little more difficult than Q had been prepared for. To be perfectly honest, he missed Riley, and so was more than a little thrilled to get a chance to see his friend's face again, even if it was only to be through a computer screen.

What he saw when he logged on, however, were not Riley's very blue, sleep-heavy eyes. Instead, he got a disturbingly clean view of the hacker's bare stomach as he toted his laptop presumably back towards the comfort of his bed. While normally Q might've appreciated the sight on a man he'd been romantically involved with and still held feelings towards, seeing the still-pink line of Riley's surgery scar that spanned the length of his torso from the bottom of his sternum down to somewhere beneath the hem of his plaid pajama bottoms disturbed Q on a deeply emotional level. Not that the scar was healing badly; in fact, based on how clean the incision and stitching had been, once it faded it would be difficult to see the mark at all against the hacker's pale skin unless he was standing in the light just right. Knowing that didn't make the guilt subside at all, though. Riley had earned it (and a myriad of smaller scars) in the process of ensuring Q would not suffer the same trauma. He and the Gates had been under MI6 protection, yet it had been Riley who had protected Q.

The thought still made him feel a bit queasy, but the feeling quickly passed as the view on the screen finally changed to one that was much more pleasant, if not outright amusing.

"Okay," Riley said mostly to himself as he crawled back into his bed, scrubbing his hands over his face as he got himself situated in a somewhat comfortable position partially back under the covers. His hair was sticking up at every odd angle, his eyes still half-lidded as he shoved his glasses onto his nose. "So what are we doing?"

After Q walked him through the dilemma (assuring him that his agent wasn't doing anything that involved any American citizen, and was simply trying to handle a situation with an English arms dealer who had fled to the States to hide), they spent the next two hours guiding the 00 through her mission without any other difficulty beyond what the Quartermaster had called Riley in for. While he did become more animated as he assisted with the mission, it never quite seemed like Riley woke himself entirely (not even when he was amusingly using an arcade's game machines to psych out and misdirect the agent's pursuers as they attempted to sneak through a local mall), and it was obvious in some of his short responses to the agent that all he really wanted to do was crawl back under his blankets and pass out for the rest of the evening. Or morning. It was very early morning in Washington D.C., enough so that the sun wouldn't be up for a couple more hours. Riley would still have some time to appreciate a deep rest before he'd need to fully greet the day.

"Thank you, Mr. Poole," Q nodded graciously once he was certain his 00 was entirely in the clear. "I will make certain MI6 compensates you appropriately for your time, and I apologize again for waking you. Please try to enjoy the rest of your evening."

Riley shook his head at the apology as a deep yawn stole away whatever words he was trying to say to accompany the sentiment. That, too, was cut short, however, when he arched his back to stretch up from the position he'd been sitting in for the past two hours hunkered over his computer. With a sharp intake of breath, his body curled back down into itself, his muscles tense, eyes clamped shut as one arm hovered protectively near his abdomen. Q called his name a couple times, but his concern went unnoticed for several seconds as Riley took in several deep but halted breaths.

"Riley! Talk to me! Are you alright? Do I need to send you a medic?" Q pressed, a new and holy unwelcome type of panic coming over him at the knowledge that his previous lover was in pain and there was nothing he could about it. Half of an entire bloody planet stood between them at the moment, and it was agonizing.

"No, I'm okay," Riley finally got out between breaths. He cracked one eye open and offered Q a small smile that the Quartermaster couldn't bear to stand. What he appreciated more was the fact that the hacker's body was slowly relaxing, the tension leaving him in a smooth, steady flow as he straightened himself up more carefully with a roll of his shoulders.

"It's dumb how many things you actually use your abs for," Riley huffed when he was able to speak normally again, "and I don't even have abs. So not fair. That whole cutting me open to save my life thing is really putting a damper on my lifestyle. _That's_ the part that's taking the longest to go back to normal. All my important insides are totally fine, but my imaginary abs? They're like a guy with a cold - all whiney about the sniffles for weeks - and don't try to defend us as men because you know we're all giant babies at heart. And my organs are like women - strong and sassy and back on their feet after like two days of getting socked around by some deadly African pneumonia virus or something. It's pathetic."

By the time Riley was finished with his rant, Q wasn't certain whether to pity him, laugh, or to simply apologize again for all the trouble the poor man was suffering. Instead of doing any of those things, he forced his brain to focus on one concept: _fine_. Riley was fine, just still in the process of healing when new scar tissue was pulling at muscles that had been cut across the grain. He would be sore for a little while, yet, but ultimately he would heal as long as he didn't push himself too hard.

And here was Q, idiot that he was, waking him up at all hours of the night to work when the man should've been resting.

"I'm very sorry, Riley," the Quartermaster said again, softly, sincerely, the shame written clearly across his face.

Riley didn't reply to that, just pushed his laptop over to the side so he could lay back down, allowing his body to stretch out into the position it had been crying for over the past few hours. With a little adjustment of the pillows and the laptop so he could both talk to Q and snuggle up with something soft at the same time, he gave his friend a satisfied smile that reminded the Quartermaster of Riley's comment about having "boyish charms." He absolutely did with that smile and that ridiculous hair and the way he was cuddling against the fluff of his pillow. The site of him was almost painful to look at in an entirely different way than the pain of looking at the scar.

"This is never going to work," he stated with a sigh.

"What isn't?" Riley asked, already half back to sleep.

"This." What this was was exasperating. "You're falling back to sleep. Why haven't you said goodbye and logged off?"

Riley shrugged one shoulder and flashed another innocent grin. "Why would I do that when I finally have you in bed with me again?"

And if that didn't drive Q's point home, he wasn't sure what would. This was the first time they had really spoken since Riley had gone, and it had Q not only falling for him all over again, but nearly pining for him. It seemed Riley was feeling the same sentiment, based on his comment. That meant the two would have to _really_ decide to be professional and cut off all ties right then and there (...well, after Riley went to sleep, at least. Q could be polite and wait that long. For Riley, of course), _or_ they could throw caution to the wind and just act on their impulses. While he already knew what side of the line Riley normally toed, Q was generally the type of person who preferred professionalism and planning and being cautious. Unless he was feeling overly emotional. Then he had been known to cross a few lines.

"You're cute when you space out," Riley mumbled with an adorably sleepy smile. And that pretty much settled Q's inner dispute for him.

"Screw professionalism," he decided. "Riley, I'm coming to see you."

"Ha. Right. You hate flying." Valid point, but not a valid reason.

"There is such as thing as medication," he pointed out stubbornly. "I can sleep right through it."

Riley snorted at that. "For eight and a half hours? That's called a coma, Q. No doctor is going to give you something strong enough to put you in a coma unless-"

 _You're dying_ , Q finished for him as he abruptly snapped his mouth shut.

"Sorry," Riley muttered softly. "I didn't mean to bring that up. I'm tired. I'll shut up now."

He made to reach for his laptop to snap it shut when Q found himself blurting out, "Wait!" without really even meaning to. It was as if his voice had suddenly become its own intelligent entity, completely free of the confines of his conscious thoughts. Yet now that it had exposed itself, it seemed to think better of staying out in the open, leaving him void of anything intelligible to say to Riley's quizzical look.

"You're not going to watch me sleep like a creeper," Riley stated with mock annoyance, breaking the awkwardness with his usual default sense of humor.

"It wouldn't be the first time," Q was quick to fire back.

Riley laughed and called him a freak before easily shifting the conversation towards safer grounds, talking about some silly horror movie he'd watched recently in which the killer enjoyed watching his victims sleep. They chatted for a bit longer until it was obvious that Riley was struggling even more to stay awake, so Q took it upon himself to end the man's suffering, drawing the discussion to a good closing point. He braved the question of whether or not they could do this again sometime, just talk (and not at all odd hours of the morning), to which Riley was all too pleased to say yes to. Talk, and more, if Q was open to it (which he was). They were tech geniuses, after all, Riley confidently added. If anyone could make a relationship from across an ocean work, it would be them.

"But I _am_ still coming to see you," Q dutifully reminded him. "It's the least I can do."

"Can you do it because you want to see me and not because you feel guilty?" Riley asked in one of his rare moments where he was completely, one hundred percent serious. "Because if you come all the way out here just to keep apologizing for something that wasn't your fault, and I have to keep telling you it's cool, but then I have to apologize every time I say something that makes you feel guilty all over again, and you have to keep telling _me_ it's okay, I don't think I-"

"Riley," Q interrupted with a fond smile, "I _want_ to see you."

"No apologizing," the hacker stated again, just to make himself very clear on where he stood on the matter.

"Cross my heart, Mr. Poole."

He seemed to ponder over it for a second before letting out an airy chuckle. "Twenty bucks says you chicken out before getting on the plane."

"You will lose that bet," Q returned, and he meant it. He was _going_ to get on a plane, he was going to get off in America to be greeted by his lover's look of proud disbelief, he was going to collect that twenty dollars, and then he was going to use it to take Riley out for a cheeseburger because that was what had started this whole bloody mess in the first place. He was about to tell Riley just exactly that when he realized that the man had, indeed, finally fallen back to sleep.

"Goodnight, Riley," he whispered with a loving smile, and only watched him for a few more seconds before logging both of their computers off. He didn't want to be a creeper, after all, and besides, he had a flight to plan.

~The End~


End file.
